


never use a safety net

by sternenrotz



Series: broken hearts hurt but they make us strong (queer horror verse) [13]
Category: The Horrors (Band)
Genre: (with a crush), Backstory, Boob Jokes, Coffee Shops, Gen, Trans Male Character, Unresolved Tension, also, faris is an ASSHOLE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 12:30:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5205950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternenrotz/pseuds/sternenrotz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faris interviews Josh and Joe for his art project, but he's not too thrilled about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	never use a safety net

**Author's Note:**

> titled after "Automatic" by Beatsteaks.
> 
> set in 2005. the usual: Joe is a trans boy and Josh currently also identifies as such, Faris currently IDs as a (bisexual) cis man. also, Rhys is a trans girl and her chosen name is Dilys and Tom is everyone's token cisgender friend but neither of them actually appear. once again, this is trans-centric fic written through a cis lens, so expect the average amount of ignorance from Faris.

For convenience’s sake, they meet at Joe’s Costa Coffee location after his Monday afternoon shift is over.

Faris is early as he always is, but Joe brings him a cappuccino as soon as he’s folded himself into a booth near the back. He figures this whole interview thing probably won’t be _too_ bad.

“Lys told me you drink it like this,” Joe says as he places the mug on the table, an overly bright customer service smile plastered across his face. “No worries, it’s on the house. Employee discount.”

He returns to sit down as soon as his shift is over, without the stupid apron but still with the same stupid smile plastered to his face. This time, he’s carrying another two mugs. He’s got some of those tiny free biscuits, too, like he’s really serious about making this as convenient and pleasant as possible for everyone involved.

Honestly, despite the hate for Joe he’s been harbouring strictly on principle, Faris has to admit he seems like a decent bloke. If it weren’t for the fact that he’s going out with Dilys, and if he didn’t literally make money by putting on a demented smile and selling overpriced coffee. That’s _vile_. Faris’ own day job is bad enough, but if he had to do it with a peppy persona plastered to his face, he’d rather quit.

“So,” Joe says. He _still_ hasn’t managed to get that smile off of his face. To be fair, maybe it just got stuck like that.

“So,” Faris says back, for lack of anything else to say that doesn’t involve telling Joe how obnoxious his expression makes him look. He _definitely_ got stuck like that. “We can start when Josh shows up.”

“Yeah,” Joe says. “He’s like that, you know? Likes to be fashionably late?”

Faris lifts his cappuccino to covertly scoff into it. He prefers his coffee black with whipped cream on top, but he supposes it’s his own fault for ordering something else that one time in that vegan café.

Despite the fact that he hates Joe on principle, the dislike he’s managed to build for Josh in the few hours they’d been in the same room is very much genuine and fiery. _Fashionably late_ is completely something Josh would say, and also probably one of Faris’ least favourite phrases in the world.

Faris turns his moleskine to a blank page and draws a crude line along the spine. He writes JOE on one side and JOSH on the other and underlines them both. May as well give off the illusion of productivity while they wait for Josh to show.

“Getting ready to take notes,” Faris explains when he notices Joe’s eyes tracing his pen on the paper.

After a small moment of consideration, he adds _TWAT_ in brackets on Josh’s side of the page.

Joe giggles, a small, boyish giggle with one hand hiding his face.

“Mate,” Faris says. “Why’re you reading my notes?”

“No, no, I agree,” Joe says. “He’s a bit of a twat, he is.”

Faris has genuinely no idea what to say to that. He only sips his cappuccino and silently scowls into it. Like this, the coffee is just right, still warmer than lukewarm and goopy with the melting milk foam. Plus, it’s free, which just means it’s all the more delicious.

Really, Faris doesn’t know enough about Joe to warrant _hating_ him. All that he really knows is: Joe is trans, he has a vinyl collection, a stupid emo haircut and a stupid barista job, and he’s Dilys’ boyfriend. Unfortunately, the last of those facts is irritating to a point where thinking about it alone makes Faris’ brain itch.

He laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

His own infatuation with a girl he met three times, maybe. Or how interesting it is that evolution never gave humans the ability to read minds, which means he can contemplate the hate he harbours strictly on principle for Joe, and Joe himself is none the wiser about it. He probably just thinks Faris is extremely socially awkward, if anything, and that isn’t _wrong_ , exactly. Still, he’d rather have Joe know that at least part of his antisocial behaviour is extremely deliberate.

“Not much, just thought it was a bit funny that I called your best friend a twat and you just laugh and agree.”

Really, it’s not even genuine _hate_ that Faris has for Joe. It’s closer to the situation of Joe being merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, except it’s not an actual _place_ but Dilys’ heart, instead. Which is a really bad mixed metaphor and also probably one of the worst ways Faris has phrased anything in his thoughts to himself, at least lately.

“Well, he’s… you get used to the twatness over time, I guess.”

Faris laughs, and it’s genuine even to his own surprise. He’d rather not.

What Faris knows about Josh is: Josh’s also trans and he won’t let anyone forget it, he plays the guitar, like a twat, he has a twat scenester hairdo and he’s working towards getting a twat degree in physics. A _twat scientist_. If there’s anything Faris hates more than obnoxious pretentious art students, it’s obnoxious uppity science students.

“Probably,” Faris says back. “I don’t tend to befriend people with twattish tendencies, you know.”

Joe laughs. “You’re friends with Tom.”

“Yeah, he’s… He wasn’t always a twat,” Faris says. “And I guess he’s the exception to the rule.”

Joe shrugs and sips his own mug. The string of a tea bag dangles out over the rim and Faris only barely suppresses the shiver at the sight. Nothing like a soggy wet sack of leaves in his tea to turn it bitter and disgusting.

“You guys met at school, right?”

“Yeah, public school. We were roommates at Rugby.” Faris is giving longer answers than his hate on principle allows.

Joe snorts in a way that’s almost derisive, but still clearly facetious. “You bourgie twats.”

Before Faris has time to contemplate whether or not he should make a comment about how he went to boarding school on a hefty scholarship, _actually_ , just to establish that he’s not here for banter between mates with Joe, the other chair on their table is pulled back. Josh takes his seat.

Really, the first and only thing Faris sees when Josh sits down is tits. Josh is wearing a button-up shirt or maybe a blouse, unbuttoned down to _very_ far down. Faris can see his bra, shiny fabric and dark lace. He’s pretty sure tits and gravity don’t work like that together, so it’s a push-up one, too. As if Josh’s tits weren’t in-your-face enough as it is.

Josh says, even if from Faris’ viewpoint it looks more like his tits are speaking, “Hey lads.”

Joe says, “Hey.”

“Who’s the bourgie twat?”

“Tom is,” Faris says. “You’re late.”

“And you’re staring at my tits,” Josh shoots back, even if he doesn’t do anything to deflect Faris’ attention from them.

Still, Faris figures he should probably, _not_ stare at Josh’s tits.

“I was just,” Faris says, to Josh’s face this time around. Really, there’s no good reason for him to have been looking there. “They were right there, you put them straight in my field of vision. I wasn’t _staring_.”

Faris would feel bad for this whole thing if he could stand Josh to begin with.

“You just looked at them for about ten seconds,” Josh says. He reaches for the other cup of tea and raises it to his face, not actually sipping it. “That’s like a whole minute in titty time.”

Joe says, “Your bra’s showing, by the way.”

Josh turns his head down to eye his _own_ tits. “Yeah. Work,” he points out, and he does one button up on his shirt.

Faris isn’t sure what to say to that. Or if he wants to know where Josh works that requires him to wear his shirt unbuttoned that far.

“So. We should start,” he says, and he runs a hand across his spread-open sketchbook.

Joe and Josh both do the, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s right,” type thing where they talk over each other and along with each other.

Faris feels distressingly third-wheeled. Maybe he should have brought Tom along for emotional support again.

“Right,” Faris says. “When I was talking to Dilys, I mainly just… you know, I let her talk and asked questions in between, like about her past and stuff, and that worked pretty well for me. So do you want to just do that again?”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” Josh says.

He sips his tea, with the tea bag removed and placed neatly on the saucer, at the same time that Joe nods in encouragement.

“Cool.”

Faris still doesn’t know what to say. Somehow, having _two_ almost-complete strangers sat in front of him is much more intimidating than just Dilys, even considering that he despises both of them.

“So, d’you guys just want to tell me about how you grew up, and how you realised you were trans, and…”

Faris hates repeating himself, but before he can even finish talking, he’s interrupted by a snorting laugh. He falters, and then basically falters twice over when he realises the laugh’s coming from _Josh_. So the shrieking cackle really is an affectation.

“Yeah, that’s good,” Josh says, then. “It’s, just so you know, you should probably forget everything Di told you about being trans right now.”

“What d’you mean?” Faris asks.

Joe picks up right where Josh left off and conveniently answers that question. “She’s not… she wasn’t _lying_ , you know, I’m assuming she wasn’t. I’ve been to her parents’ house, and her mum’s got pictures of Lys where she’s like, six years old, and she’s got short hair and boy clothes and she’s playing dolls with her sister.”

“It’s quite precious,” Josh adds.

“Yeah, it is,” Joe says. “But it’s not like that for most of us, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Faris says. “So…”

That’s how, eventually, Joe explains, “I was seventeen when I came out to my mum. My parents are divorced, so, but she didn’t take it well at all.”

Faris says a very empathic, “Fuck,” for lack of anything else he could think of. “I’m sorry.”

It’s a lot less feigned than he would have expected it from himself, but in all fairness, _nobody_ deserves that. Not even his arch-enemy on principle.

“Yeah, it was…” Joe says, with his tone quite clearly indicating that it was _awful_. “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. ‘cause there’s trans kids who get kicked out by their parents for religious reasons and stuff like that, but my mum mainly just thought I was confused and it was all just a phase, since I was really a _lesbian_.”

Joe snorts and pulls a face. Faris knits his brow in what’s probably subtly mimicking it.

“Are you?” he asks, “Straight?”

“No, that’s what’s funny about it,” Joe says. “I’m bisexual.”

“We both are,” Josh adds.

Faris jots down a quick note in his moleskine. Joe’s side of the page has several line of chicken-scratch capital letters scrawled onto it already, and Josh’s says _(twat)_ and nothing else.

“Right,” he says. “So, I don’t want to do this like a big block, where I interview one of you first while the other one just listens, so, Josh. D’you want to talk about how you grew up next?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Josh smiles and shows off many sharp little teeth when he does. Faris is pretty sure he’s got more of them than what’s normal for a human. He thinks of sharks, or maybe the grinning cat from that Disney movie, and of those people who get special procedures to have their incisors sharpened into vampire fangs. Maybe that’s what Josh did to his entire mouth.

“So my childhood was basically completely different to Joe and Di’s childhoods. ‘cause I never was really into _boy_ things and I never wanted to dress like a boy either.”

Josh shrugs and Faris notes it down.

“I was… actually, I was pretty fat as a kid. I still am a bit fat.”

The way Josh’s sitting with his arms crossed in front of his chest, he can move his one hand just a bit to squeeze his own tit as he talks. His thumb rubs at the fabric of his shirt, and Faris pretends to ignore it.

“But I got bullied pretty badly for it in school until I was fourteen or fifteen, when I found out about shoegaze bands and riot grrrl and goths, all the cool stuff. And then I started dyeing my hair and wearing tons of eyeliner and caring about feminism, and then I got bullied for that instead.”

“Ouch,” Faris deadpans, for lack of anything else to say.

“Yeah. It was kind of the same as with Joe, I got called a lesbian as an insult a lot, except I didn’t realise I even liked girls until after I realised I was trans.”

“How’d that happen?”

“I was…” Josh knits his brow while he thinks. “I was seventeen, I think. I knew what being trans is before but I thought you could only be a trans _girl_ , not a boy. You know?”

Faris doesn’t think he _truly_ knows what Josh means. Either way, he says, “Yeah.”

“So even after I found out about trans boys I spent a long time being really unsure about if I was or not, ‘cause everyone on the internet kept saying…” And Josh turns his head to look accusingly over at Joe. “ _Yeah, I played with cars and I liked football and I was a tomboy, and I always thought I was a lesbian_ …”

He doesn’t so much imitate Joe’s _voice_ as he just mocks his general tone, all soft-spoken and nasal with a stuffy nose. Maybe Faris loves Josh just for that, just a little.

Joe says, “I _never_ played with cars as a kid,” and swats Josh on the arm.

“Anyway,” Faris says.

“Yeah,” Josh says. “And then there was me and I was like, _well_ , I actually really liked playing with dolls as a kid and I like doing my makeup and shagging boys.”

Josh cuts off and breaks out into that stupid affectation of a cackle, and Joe elbows him, but he can’t keep himself from giggling, either. Faris supposes he should laugh along.

“So I went back and forth on this stuff for ages,” Josh says, laugh still shining through his voice, “But I just started thinking of myself as a boy at some point, like, a boy who likes eyeliner and lipstick.”

“And shagging boys,” Faris can’t keep himself from cutting in.

Josh has to struggle to keep that cackle inside his mouth once again. “Yeah,” he says once again. “So after awhile I noticed I was on to something, so.”

He smiles with his assortment of too many too sharp teeth. Faris reflexively smiles back and hurries to finish jutting down his notes.

“How’d your parents react?”

Josh and Joe both burst out laughing at the same time, at some inside joke Faris isn’t in on.

“That bad?”

“It wasn’t _bad_ ,” Josh insists. “It was like, my parents didn’t know anything at _all_ about being trans so I mainly just screamed and cried at them when I first came out, so I had to explain a lot of concepts to them after. And it’s not…” Josh has to pause to suppress his laugh. “They weren’t _unsupportive_ , they had good intentions, you know?”

Then his face starts to fall apart, so it’s Joe who speaks next.

“See, with the three of us there’s this sliding scale from supportive parents to unsupportive parents with me as one extreme and Lys as the other.” Joe moves his hands to helpfully illustrate what he’s saying, and he says, “And then Josh like… He kind of exists _outside_ the entire concept of the scale, see?”

“Yeah,” Josh says, “Thanks for explaining. My parents, when I came out, they were the type of parents who were like, _We’ll always support you and you’ll always be our daughter_.”

Once again, Faris says, “Ouch.”

Josh continues, “And when I first started binding my tits down, my mum just said to me, oh, you shouldn’t leave the house like that, a big girl with a flat chest, what if you get attacked?”

He cracks out a snort again, the low-pitched one that matches his speaking voice. Faris has never been this _irritated_ by a relatively normal-sounding laugh.

“It’s like, _Mum_. You let me walk around with _those_ for so many years,” Josh says, and he gestures across his chest.

Faris supposes he should laugh along, at least a little. “Sounds like you’re taking it with humour.”

“It’s pretty funny when you don’t have to deal with it anymore, I guess,” Josh says. “I moved out as soon as I could, so, it’s not that _bad_ if I only have to hear it once a month.”

Eventually, Joe retold that story about how he and Dilys met, which Faris regret asking him about pretty much as soon as he did. Josh said, once again, that he’s studying towards a physics degree, and Joe explained that he took a year off from school to start hormones and get his name changed. He’s studying illustration in his first year now.

“You go to St Martin’s?”

Faris doesn’t pay attention to any of the other students on his course as it is, but he’d rather not spend time with Joe unless it’s strictly necessary. Best to be sure.

“Slade.”

Faris does the customary art student nod of acclaim.

Eventually, Faris asks, “So, other than that, what’s your plans for the future? Like, surgery wise?” Then, he quickly adds, “It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me, just say so.”

Joe says, “Well.”

He fidgets with his fingers, the same way Faris does as he listens, not sure what to do with his hands. Faris _hates_ being mirrored.

“I’m on T, like I said, and I definitely want chest surgery, but I don’t really know about any of the downstairs stuff yet, you know?”

He pulls a weird face. Faris _really_ doesn’t need to hear Joe talking about his junk, either, so he just nods.

“Yeah. Like I said, you don’t need to go into detail if you don’t want to.”

“It’s okay,” Joe says. “It just seems _weird_ to me.” He just keeps making that face and draws his shoulders up as if in discomfort, and explains, “It’s not that I _don’t_ want the right kind of junk, it’s just I don’t want to work for it.”

Josh snorts at that under his breath, and Faris laughs along.

“You’re not missing out on anything. Dicks are gross,” he says.

Maybe he shouldn’t have said that, Faris realises immediately. A part of him feels it’s bad etiquette to mention that having a dick is mostly uncomfortable when he’s talking to someone who’s literally _transgender_ , but more than anything, he feels exposed. Like he shouldn’t mention his dick when people didn’t ask about it, but also maybe that he just expressed an opinion that isn’t normal.

To get the conversation topic away from Joe’s junk and the irrefutable fact that he’s using his junk on Dilys, and his own junk, for that matter, Faris asks, “Josh? You?”

“I’m starting T after I get my degree.” Josh shrugs and says, “I’m okay to start right now, but it’s complicated. ‘cause I’m still registered as a female student, I live on a female-only floor, and I get enough shit for how I look as it is and I’d have to get a new job, too, so.”

“Science students?” Faris asks.

He figured the people who study how the world works and what it’s composed of would be more accepting of this stuff. But then, that’s maybe because he never cared much for natural sciences in general and subconsciously thinks of them as one big muddle. Also, he’s _really_ not sure if he wants to know what Josh’s job is.

“Yeah,” Josh says, sips his tea and snorts in a vaguely derisive way. “Maybe I should’ve gone into liberal arts instead. Or done a gap year so I can be stealth.”

He nudges Joe’s elbow with his own. Faris decides that whichever one of them is egging the other one on at the moment, he dislikes that one less.

Josh says, “So yeah, and I really want a dick, so there’s that.”

He flashes his fangs and absent-mindedly squeezes his own tit again. Faris doesn’t know what to say in response.

“But I’d have both if I could, I think, seems more fun.”

Joe breaks out in a weird, quiet giggle and calls him a sexual deviant.

Faris can’t help but laugh at them both. It’s better than the alternative, which is absently wondering whether Josh’s taking the piss out of him, or maybe whether he’s purposely trying to make Faris as uncomfortable as possible.

“You don’t want chest surgery?” Faris asks, because he feels he _should_ , for the sake of completeness. He adds, “If you don’t mind telling me.” Although that’s probably unnecessary to state with Josh.

“I guess, someday,” Josh says. “At least a reduction so they stay flat more easily, but I’m more bothered by the other stuff right now, so.” He shrugs.

“Okay.”

Faris feels he should ask some more questions, but he’s asked everything he asked all his other interviewees. He can’t think of anything else, either. For a few long seconds, it’s quiet.

Until Josh turns to Joe and starts, “Oh, by the way, did I tell you about…”

Then he starts going on about some guitar pedal he built, and they start chattering away. Once again, Faris can’t help but feel like a third wheel. That’s to say, until Josh loops him into a conversation about shoegaze.

“You like Jesus and Mary Chain, don’t you?”

And _that’s_ how he ends up chatting to them both for another hour or so.

Which Faris has to admit is pretty enjoyable, if he ignores who he’s talking to. Even then, Josh really _is_ a smart guy under his twattish exterior, apparently.

Except then, he checks his phone and says, “Guys, I’ve got to head off for work now.”

Faris double-checks his own watch. It’s past seven in the evening.

He asks, “What d’you actually do for work?”

Well, he never thought to ask until now.

“Bartending,” Josh says, and apparently, it must have clicked for him, too, so he adds, “Nowhere suspicious, I just take my tits out to help me get tips.”

“He works at a lesbian bar,” Joe supplies, helpfully.

“Long story.”

“Okay,” Faris says, and he closes his moleskine and folds it back into his coat pocket. “So about the studio thing, so I can actually draw you guys… Is this Thursday okay?”

Josh and Joe both respond with an unison mash of _yeah, yeah, sure_ , talking along with and over each other.

Still, Faris clarifies, “‘cause I’ve got Dilys in that day, too, so it’s convenient if I just do all the rough sketches in one go.”

“That’s cool,” Joe says.

They say goodbye, and Faris can’t get his way out of hugging either of them. It turns out he rides a different bus, though, which makes up for it in some way. He’s halfway down the road to his bus stop when he remembers to check his mobile, one unread text from Tom.

_how’d it go? X_

This time, he stops to text back. _Couldve been worse_.


End file.
